May

COSAM’s Office of Student Services welcomed a new academic advisor this month, Meredith Jones ’12. She received an undergraduate degree from COSAM in biomedical sciences and then attended Clemson University where she received a master of education with a focus in counselor education.
“While I was a student, I worked for COSAM as a peer advisor. That was when my career path began to take a major shift; no longer did a future in dentistry excite me, but working with students gave me a new perspective and caused me to begin researching graduate programs that focused on higher education and student affairs,” said Jones. “On the first day of graduate school, our professors told us that 'no one ever gets their dream job out of grad school.' I, however, did! I am so excited to return to The Plains and to be working for the office that sparked my interest in advising!”
In addition to serving as a COSAM Peer Advisor while she was an undergraduate, Jones was also an orientation intern for COSAM, a role that positioned her to advise incoming students on academic-related matters, such as curriculum and course scheduling, as well as a COSAM Leader. The COSAM Leaders are a group of exemplary COSAM students who serve as the official ambassadors for the college.

During the past five years, physics Professor Edward Thomas developed the mantra, "No stress, no stress, no stress." By repeating the phrase over and over, he had hoped to stave off any ill effects that might result from overseeing the creation of the new Magnet Laboratory at Auburn University, which included the development and delivery of a 6,000-pound superconducting magnet, the only one of its kind in the world.
The new lab houses the Magnetized Dusty Plasma Experiment, a one-of-a-kind facility that will support plasma physics research for Auburn University students and researchers, as well as for a diverse team of national and international researchers who will come to Auburn to perform experimental and theoretical studies. More than a dozen Auburn students, including undergraduates, graduates and postdoctoral-researchers, were involved in the design and implementation of the new laboratory, and as the research evolves over the next several years, Thomas envisions opportunities for a long line of undergraduate and graduate student researchers.

Dr. Wendy Hood’s research on the milk composition in the naked-rat and Hood and Dr. Amy Skibiel’s research on evolution of milk composition were recently featured in Science News, Smithsonian Magazine, SPLASH! Milk Science Update, and the blog Mammals Suck…Milk!

For more than a century, researchers have believed that sponges represented the earliest living lineages of the animal tree. Thanks to modern genomic sequencing techniques, scientists in Auburn's College of Sciences and Mathematics discovered that ctenophores, or comb jellies, are actually at the base of the animal kingdom. The research results have been published in the journal Nature and can be read at this link.
"The placement of comb jellies at the base of the animal tree rewrites some of our very basic understanding of how animals first evolved on this planet," said Kenneth Halanych, a professor in the Department of Biological Sciences at Auburn. "The new genomic data overturns 150 years of scientific theories about the early evolution of animals."
Halanych and the team of scientists, including Kevin Kocot, postdoctoral scholar in the Department of Biological Sciences at Auburn, along with an international team of scientists led by Leonid Moroz, Distinguished Professor in the Department of Neuroscience at the University of Florida, have studied the complete genome of a comb jelly, Pleurobrachia bachei, known as the "Pacific sea gooseberry." They were able to show that the species is remarkably distinct from other animals in that the genetic mechanisms used in ctenophore nerves and muscles are different from those seen in other animals.

Dr. Orlando Acevedo’s proposal entitled “Collaborative Research: Protein Arginine Methylation” has been funded by the National Science Foundation. Dr. Acevedo will collaborate with Dr. Joan Hevel of Utah State University on this three-year project.

Three Auburn University Honors College students, including Jamesa Stokes, a senior physics major, have been awarded Fulbright Scholarships to continue their studies in the United Kingdom and Germany this summer and fall.
Stokes will conduct research at the German Space Agency’s Institute of Structures in Design in Stuttgart, Germany. An Atlanta native, Stokes has completed internships with Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. In addition, she was a Benjamin A. Gilman International Scholar to Reutlingen, Germany. Her research investigates the behavior of fiber-oriented ceramics during hyper-sonic flight in order to develop better thermal protection systems for spaceflight vehicles.
“I studied in Germany in the fall of 2012, and it was my first time traveling outside of the country, so it was truly an amazing experience,” Stokes said. “Now I can go back and experience more of Germany while doing research that interests me at the same time.”

From May 19-23 Auburn will host 31 researchers representing nine institutions in the U.S., Canada and Germany participating in a genomic analysis workshop or “Bioinformatics Bootcamp”. Initiated by the NSF-funded WormNet2 grant, the workshop will train participants in various aspects of next-generation DNA sequencing data manipulation including genome mapping, assembly, annotation and phylogenomic analyses.

The Georgia and Alabama Plant Conservation Alliances met jointly for the first time May 1-2, on the Auburn campus. The meeting highlighted local efforts toward addressing plant conservation issues in both Alabama and Georgia and featured guest speakers from Atlanta Botanical Gardens, the Georgia Plant Conservation Alliance, the Alabama Plant Conservation Alliance and the Auburn University Donald E. Davis Arboretum.

Spencer Kerns, COSAM Dean’s Medalist and Outstanding Senior in Chemistry and Biochemistry in the 2013-2014 academic year, has received an NCAA Postgraduate Scholarship and will enter graduate school in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Texas, Austin in the fall semester.

Graham Gordon, a COSAM Honors College student double-majoring in mathematics and physics, has been chosen as a 2014 Barry M. Goldwater Scholar, an honor that is only bestowed to a approximately 300 students nationwide each year.
The scholarship is widely considered the most prestigious award in the United States for undergraduates in STEM disciplines.
Gordon, of Aiken, S.C., conducts research under the guidance of Professor Peter Nylen in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics. He is also an undergraduate teaching assistant with Professor Joe Perez in the Department of Physics, and he previously participated in a research group studying computational Rydberg atomic physics.
“I would like to thank Dr. Nylen for being an ideal research adviser and Dr. Paul Harris (associate director for national prestigious scholarships) for guiding me during the application process,” Gordon said. “Anyone pursuing research in a STEM field should consider this scholarship. Applying is an enlightening experience itself.”
Gordon’s primary research involves partial distance matrix completion with multilateration applications to wireless sensor network localization, and his publications include an article in the Journal of Physics B: Atomic, Molecular and Optical Physics.

Collins is running a "green fields" exploration project for African Barrick Gold, in western Kenya, and this is a picture of him showing some visible gold in drill core to the Kenyan Minister of Mines.